The rise in productivity culture over the past ten years has resulted in success being defined by individual efficiency and labor. We’ve turned people into robots, optimized to the very last second. We’re more than our jobs and our value shouldn’t be tied to our contribution to the economy or the hours we’ve spent at our desks.
Of course, with the peak of productivity culture comes the inevitable backlash. We’re all exhausted. How can we not be when the cogs of capitalism are determined to consume our life force and transform it into dollar bills?
If hustle culture dominated our society pre-covid, post-covid we’re setting boundaries and practicing self-care. The language of productivity culture replaced by therapy-speak, both the product of toxic labor conditions and a woefully inadequate social safety net. That drugstore sheet-mask is a just band-aid for a mental health crisis and a loneliness epidemic. We don’t need to thrive in the workplace, we need to burn the system down to the ground.
These ten writers use workplace fiction as a lens to examine late-stage capitalism, the gig economy, and the dark side of productivity culture.
Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind by Molly McGhee
Molly McGhee’s debut novel, a surrealist office drama, follows a hopeless, broke man who is offered an unlikely escape by a government loan forgiveness program. Jonathan is tasked with clearing debris from the dreams of corporate workers while they sleep, an opportunity that provides him with the chance to clear his debts and begin a new life. A workplace novel that satirizes corporate culture and reckons with the costs of crushing debt under late-stage capitalism.
Diary of a Void by Emi Yagi
Ms. Shibata escapes sexual harassment at her old job by finding a new position in Tokyo, but quickly discovers that as the only woman at her workplace, a company that manufactures cardboard tubes, she is expected to perform all the menial tasks. She decides to fake a pregnancy to escape, forcing her to keep up an all-absorbing nine-month ruse. Soon, however, the lie becomes all-consuming, and boundaries between the lie and her own life begin to blur.
Severance by Ling Ma
After societal collapse due to the Shen Fever pandemic in 2011, Candace Chen continues to work at her unfulfilling job at a Manhattan-based Bible company named Spectra. As businesses shut down as the pandemic worsens, Candace accepts a lucrative contract as one of the few remaining office-based workers, until she is the only employee left after being abandoned by her superiors. Candace documents New York City’s collapsing infrastructure on a blog named NY Ghost before escaping the city as one of the last survivors.
The Employees by Olga Ravn
This workplace novel by the Danish writer Olga Ravn is structured as a series of witness statements compiled by a workplace committee. On board the interstellar Six Thousand Ship, the crew, composed of both humans and humanoids, complain about their work in staff reports and memos. When the ship begins to take on strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew becomes deeply attached to them and mutiny and tension begins to boil.
Life of the Mind by Christine Smallwood
An adjunct professor in New York City, Dorothy has poured years of effort into her academic career only to be trapped in a series of low-wage contracts without hope of finding a permanent position. As she watches her successful friends and peers pursue high-powered careers and start families, Dorothy feels stuck, unable to imagine an alternative future for herself. Darkly humorous and incisive, Life of the Mind is a brilliant satire of campus culture, a biting critique of adjunct labor in academia, and an unforgettable portrait of an ambitious woman on the edge.
Lightning Rods by Helen DeWitt
Joe is a struggling vacuum cleaner salesman who proposes an unorthodox idea to stop sexual harassment in the workplace and increase productivity. His solution is “lightning rods,” anonymous women who provide sexual release at the office for high-performing male employees, an idea that proves to be a runaway success. This humorous, satiric second novel by the author of The Last Samurai offers a damning critique of the corporate world and workplace sexual harassment.
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
36-year-old Tokyo resident Keiko Furukura has never felt like she fits in, but when she starts working at the Hiiromachi branch of Smile Mart at the age of 18, she finds a sense of peace and purpose. By copying the social interactions and mannerisms of her coworkers, Keiko attempts to play the part of a “normal person,” until people around her begin to pressure her to get married and start a professional career. Convenience Store Woman is an incisive look at work culture and the pressure to conform in contemporary Japan.
The New Me by Halle Butler
The New Me is a darkly funny novel about a young woman named Millie who works a depressing temp job while sinking into greater despair at the idea the job might become permanent. When the possibility of a full-time job arises, Millie dreams of a different future but realizes how empty that vision has become. A fierce critique of consumerism, productivity culture and the stagnating job market facing young workers.
The Circle by Dave Eggers
A woman in her early twenties named Mae Holland gets hired at a huge conglomerate social media company known as the Circle, run by “Three Wise Men” who recruit “hundreds of gifted young minds” every week. Mae is incredibly grateful for her new job and gradually becomes completely integrated into the sinister and far-reaching activities of the company. A satire of the superficiality of the online culture Eggers terms “technoconsumerism,” The Circle is a searingly relevant and unforgettable social commentary.
Help Wanted by Adelle Waldman
Help Wanted focuses on a group of underpaid workers at the big-box store Town Square who plan to get rid of their bad boss by getting her promoted to a position so high she won’t be able to bother them. The novel is a comedic critique of contemporary labor and a corporate culture that prioritizes efficiency above all else, even when it’s derived from underpaying workers. Adelle Waldman’s second novel traces the desperate striving for stability by minimum wage workers in America.